A twisted ideology is the danger not guns

A twisted ideology is the danger not guns

As you are no doubt aware the Federal Parliament has been recalled to debate the Federal Government’s legislative response to the Bondi terror attack, a brutal antisemitic attack that saw the most significant loss of Jewish lives outside of Israel since the Holocaust.

The tragic events of 14 December 2025 were the inevitable consequence of the failure to address the rise is antisemitism in Australia following the massacre of civilians in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.  Over the course of the proceeding two years from the steps of the Opera House to the Foot Bridge at Bondi a twisted ideology was permitted to fester and grow strength.  Without consequence protestors called for the eradication of the Jewish race by chanting ‘gas the Jews’, ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalise the intifada’. 

Prior to Bondi, indeed as early as October 2023, my colleagues and I, former Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton, principle amongst us, had called on Prime Minister Albanese to take the rise in antisemitic sentiment seriously.  Our calls to bring those preaching hate and inciting violence to justice went unheeded, and now those that failed to take action under existing laws seek approval for wide ranging powers that would amount to the greatest restriction on free speech since Robert Menzies, wrongly, sought to ban the Australian Communist Party.

Thankfully as I write the Prime Minister has been mugged by the reality of how muddle headed his proposal is and has dump the proposal to criminalise subjective emotional hurt but he proposes to continue with reform to our gun laws.

Bondi was not caused by a failure of our nation’s gun laws, but by a failure of leadership.  Australia does not have a gun problem, we have a problem with Islamic extremism that has taken root in our country.  Law-abiding firearm owners did not cause this attack and they should not be treated as if they did.

There are elements of the Government’s package I can support. A properly established national firearms register (one wonders why it doesn’t already exist), strengthened national-security checks for licence holders to prevent anyone on an ASIO watch list from holding a firearms licence are reasonable measures, but beyond this, I do not support further restrictions on firearms ownership.